July 20 - August 16/23Paris Plages: sand, beach trees, volley balls and bikinis -- on the Seine! Along the Right Bank quays and Hôtel de Ville until August 16th, at the Bassin de la Villette until August 23rd. This year's edition of the Paris Plages will feature many fun activities. Free entry, 9am-midnight. The 2015 schedule will be up here on opening day.

July 22-August 23The annual Open-Air Cinema Festival takes place Wed-Sun nights at the Parc de la Villette's Triangle Prairie (M° Porte de Pantin), starting at sunset (around 10pm), free entry (deck chair rentals from 7:30pm). This year's haunting and spooky and horrific theme is "Home Cinema" (all films can be downloaded to watch at home from the website), including: Last Days, Beetlejuice, shutter Island, The Shining, Moulin Rouge, the Ghost Writer, and many French and international films (all in VO with French subtitles).

Dining at Chef Alain Carrère’s upscale bistro Le Pamphlet is a study in contrasts. The rustic-modern dining room is comfortable (handy coathooks in the rough stone wall next to every table) yet refined (off-white tablecloths, the exposed beams in the ceiling painted a sleek gray). The service is formal (crumber between courses) yet relaxed (blue jean-clad hostess). The food is divine and beautifully presented, though the American tourists at the next table may embarrass the hell out of you.

Clearly, this place sees more than its share of English-speaking clientele, as evidenced by the staff’s insistence on speaking English to me and my husband, despite the fact that we clearly understood the menu and only spoke French to them. And then there was the neighboring table. Fortunately, the tables at Le Pamphlet are good-sized and spaced reasonably far apart, especially by Paris standards.

Unfortunately, we were still close enough to witness a huffy teenage girl flip the luscious-looking piece of foie gras from atop her steak Rossini to the side before disgustedly dropping it onto her mother’s plate, then pulling out her iPod and headphones while waiting for her meat to be re-cooked. I hope guests like this are the exception rather than the rule, because the food here deserves much closer attention.

Beginning with the amuse, a full-flavored wild mushroom soup, the market-driven cooking is a feast of seasonal flavors. Our starters, marinated shrimp with avocado cream for my husband, eggs four ways with ham-wrapped asparagus for me, were presented on elegant rectangular plates and tasted even better than they looked. Both of our main courses (one rack of lamb, one veal flank) were cooked to perfection and dressed with umami-ful sauces that could only have been made with real, long-simmered veal demiglace. For dessert, my husband opted for the pistachio mille-feuille with cherries, while I chose the poached pear in warm chocolate sauce with vanilla ice cream – a deconstructed Poire Belle Hélène of sorts – and the temperature and texture contrasts made an ideal finish to this almost-spring meal.

All of these were options on the €35, 3-course menu, which is a fantastic deal, especially considering the quality of the food and the casual elegance of the dining room. An à la carte dinner here would probably run around €60. We toyed with the idea of going all out and getting the €65, 6-course tasting menu, but decided that might best be saved for a weekend night. I’m sure that it is nothing short of a culinary masterpiece, if the artfully balanced, fresh, seasonal cuisine I enjoyed on Wednesday night is any indication.